You missed a great hour if you didn’t make it to our Miracle Mile Toastmasters meeting. There were 2 marvelous prepared speeches, and innovative Table Topics questions. We learned one of our members won an award at her company’s “boot camp” training, another Award Winning Toastmaster will be off to London to continue her career there, and OMG, if Alex could be anything else it would be a dog???

Our first speaker, Angela Martinez is a Miami Realtor who spoke about “The New Miami.” Angela compared the real estate market to the stock market with it’s ups and downs. “After all, it can’t always be driving upward.” We’ve certainly seen bumps in the road, but understanding what drives and sustains the market is important. Some of the statistics she gave were encouraging. Buying a home can be an excellent investment as a place to live or to rent. Currently 50% of the homes/condos in Miami are rented. Miami is the #2 city in the country when looking at population growth. We have more than 26,000 additional jobs in January 2017, than in January 2016. Future development looks excellent. It seems now is an exciting time for the real estate industry.

Our second speaker was Felix Lorenzo. Coming from Cuba he brings an interesting perspective to his speeches. He said on his arrival to the United States, folks said he came from a banana country (or republic). He wasn’t quite sure what that was. Felix noted that as a young person Communist newspapers were shut down. Later after regime changes, he noted that many people who worked actively in the former government, found jobs in the new — there was a requirement however — becoming a communist. Today, Felix is neither a Republican nor a Democrat. Instead he is proudly an Independent. What he does do is listen to both sides of political discussions and recommends we practice using our listening skills as well.

Table Topics was most enjoyable. Our speakers were Tu Duong, Alex Moreira, Jerry Bailey, Ghislaine Demombynes, Arlene Amitirigala, Hang Tran and Mike Molina. It was hard to choose the top three from this group. In third place was our award-winning Table Topics speaker, Arlene Amitirigala, speaking on WHAT? She’s moving to London! Our loss is the UK’s gain. In second place was Mike Molina who admitted he doesn’t think about others as often as he should. Our Mike? Say it isn’t so. And the winner was Alex Moreira who believes a dogs life isn’t so bad. His mentor:

SCOOBY

Our evaluation team (Chris Mesa, Elena Cobo and Sharon Patish) gave us all something to think about before we deliver another speech.

In order to make a point — use examples that are relevant to the audience.

If your giving statistics round up your numbers (i.e, more than 20,000 instead of 20,435).

Make your ending strong. Preface it with a comment like, “This I know for sure.”